Lease accounting - A revolution on the balance sheet

Highlights

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The mission to bring leases ‘on balance sheet’ is finally nearing realisation. In March this year, the International Accounting Standards Board and US Financial Accounting Standards Board announced that they had finalised their discussions on lease accounting and instructed staff to begin drafting the standard.

Looming changes to lease accounting will have significant ramifications that Boardrooms need to consider carefully and plan for.

These include:

Higher liabilities on the balance sheet

Impact on net profit and earnings per share

Sale and leasebacks coming onto the balance sheet

Potential lowering of property portfolio valuations

A host of tax treatment questions

The need for effective communication to investors

In effect, it’s a new risk issue boards need to add to their list now.

Our report, ‘A Revolution on the Balance Sheet’, includes a number of contributions from KPMG individuals, each of whom provide a detailed look at this approaching collision of accounting and real world impacts.

This article represents the views of the author only, and does not necessarily represent the views or professional advice of KPMG in the UK.